This invention relates generally to pharmaceutical dispensers and, more particularly, to a dispenser that stores and dispenses orally dissolvable strips.
For many years, most prescription and over-the-counter medications have been dispensed in pill or liquid form. Pill medication, of course, is typically dispensed in bottles although it may also be dispensed in foil packages. More recently, however, pharmaceuticals have been provided in the form of orally dissolvable strips. Each thin strip dissolves very quickly on a consumer's tongue and is then absorbed into the body.
Orally dissolvable strips have typically been dispensed as a stack of strips packaged in a box, each medicinal strip being sandwiched between thin strips of plastic so as to maintain purity and to keep the strips from sticking to one another. Although assumably effective for their intended use, the traditional packaging of orally dissolvable medicine strips requires a user first separate one strip from others in a stack, peel the plastic separator strips away from a respective medicine strip, and then to dispose of the separate films. Another disadvantage of dispensing pharmaceuticals, whether pills or orally dissolvable strips, is that a patient may require a multitude of different medicaments multiple times a day. Each time, many bottles or many strips must be opened or dispensed, requiring valuable time and introducing the potential for errors to be made.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a dispenser for delivering orally dissolvable strips. Further, it would be desirable to have a dispenser that automatically separates a medicine strip from the plastic separator strips as the medicine strip is dispensed. In addition, it would be desirable to have a dispenser that collects the separator strips after they have been separated from the medicine strip and the medicine strip has been dispensed. Still further, it would be desirable to have a dispenser the enables multiple dispensers to be operatively connected in a manner enabling strips from multiple dispensers to be dispensed simultaneously and with the operation of only a single input element.